Robot hoofs it up the football table

FANS of table football, or foosball, will no longer have to hang around at the pub waiting for a friend to turn up before they can play. A robotic foosball table will be able to give them just as good a game.

Foosball is a table-based game in which players twist, push and pull rotating metal rods attached to figures representing soccer players. The idea is to use the model players to kick a ball into the opponent’s goal. To turn it into a single-player game, roboticists led by Bernhard Nebel at University of Freiburg in Germany have connected the …